Follow the author of this article

Follow the topics within this article

Bill and Ted star Alex Winter has said he suffered "hellish" sexual abuse as a child actor in the Seventies, by an older man who is now dead, and became "very dysfunctional" while dealing with his trauma.

Winter, 52, is best known for playing high school Bill S Preston in the Bill and Ted comedy film franchise with Keanu Reeves.

He told BBC Radio 5 Live that making the Bill and Ted films was a "therapeutic" experience. "It was really, really helpful for me mentally," he said. "The world of Bill and Ted is a very sweet and fun place to run around in."

Winter continued: "Keanu and I were close. The director [Stephen Herek] and all of us were close... we all very young, we all had each other’s backs. It was a very safe, familial environment."

Before appearing in 1989 hit Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Winter had his breakthrough role as a young actor in horror comedy The Lost Boys (1987), alongside Corey Feldman. Feldman has also spoken about his traumatic experiences as a child actor, and recently claimed to have been sexually abused while working on The Lost Boys.

Alex Winter in the 1987 vampire comedy The Lost Boys

Winter told Radio 5's Adrian Chiles that he was inspired to speak about his experiences by the recent wave of sexual harassment and assault claims that have come to light in recent months, initially sparked by a New York Times investigation into alleged misconduct by disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein.

"I don't think anybody felt like they were going to be heard if they said anything about this type of behaviour, until very recently," Winter said. "The biggest light bulb I've ever had, since I was abused, was when this stuff started coming out, over the course of the last year."

He continued: "That sort of thing is now being spoken about in a much more open and accepting way on a societal level... It gives you a lot more freedom to just tell anybody." As a younger actor, Winter thought speaking about his abuse publicly would have been "absolutely taboo in the popular vernacular – so I didn't feel that I had any place of safety to unlock an extremely sensitive and potentially dangerous secret."

Winter said he now leads a "functioning, healthy life". "I absolutely feel like a survivor," he said. "I love my career, I love my family and my kids. I feel incredibly lucky." He has recently won acclaim for Deep Web, a 2015 documentary he directed about the rise of Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies.